Hey, NSW: You Spent 10K On A Variety Show Blaming Xmas For Global Warming

Alright, yes, attacks on the “attacks on Christmas” have almost become more of a thing than actual attempts to can the holiday, and it’s easy to sling accusations of unfettered Grinching at anyone who deigns to limit our festive cheer.

Still, when a Christmas variety show which bills itself as “Carols by Candlelight meets the Apocalypse” nabs $10k in taxpayer funding from the City of Sydney, there might just be something to those anti-anti-Xmas complaints.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore is looking at a fat lump of coal in her stocking for greenlighting the upcoming Christmas Climate Change Variety Hour, which will “question current Christmas traditions” through “singalong, dance, mime, poetry, durational performance and experimental lectures.” 

Earlwood Farm, the gang behind the upcoming gig, don’t exactly mesh with the traditional, balls-to-the-wall festive explosion that is Christmas in Australia. Billing themselves as a “living experiment”, the crew have “certain ideals that don’t require the perceived security of ownership.” 

Read: Sydney handed funds to a group who are most definitely not down with the whole Christmas consumerism thing. In turn, they got a protest show. SHOCKER.

Councillor Edward Mandla brought the sass too. Tying the show in with the Paris climate talks, he said “I can just see Vladimir Putin leaning across to Malcolm Turnbull and saying ‘I’ve spoken to the mayor of Moscow and we’d like to franchise the Comrade Clover Christmas Climate Change Variety Hour’.”

Ms Moore said she was “disappointed that what council unanimously approved in May – an academic, constructive project – seems to have become an attack on the important role of organisations promoting Christmas, which includes the city of Sydney.”

If the show goes ahead, you can catch the gang drop festive, mimed, climate change truth-bombs on December 12.